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modeless | on: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?
You have it exactly backwards. It is far less complex and expensive and resource intensive to build Starlink than to run a new copper or fiber line with associated telecom equipment on both sides to every rural residence in the US, let alone worldwide. Yes, despite the large cost of launching satellites. And it's especially good that we don't have to force everyone to subsidize inefficient monopoly utilities with our tax dollars to get everyone connected. Plus the benefit of mobility is enormous and shouldn't be ignored.

As solar and batteries become cheaper, eventually we can transition to most rural residences being entirely off the grid and self sufficient. This will also be cheaper and less resource intensive than maintaining the electric grid in those rural areas, let alone building it in the first place, and we can all stop paying hidden subsidies for those users.

andrewharvey | parent | next
this.

Except it's no longer only in rural areas, grid connected utilities are now costing more than being off grid in the cities too. Starlink residential 100 Mbps is cheaper ($69/mo AUD) (ignoring hardware and setup costs) than 50 Mbps fixed line internet ($80/mo AUD). Depending on location, home solar + batteries will usually work out cheaper than being on the grid within the battery warranty period too.

rob74 | root | parent | next
The question that comes up then is: how much traffic can Starlink handle until it gets saturated? I'm not sure it can handle even a significant percentage of the users that currently use wired connectivity. And if they see that demand for their services starts overwhelming supply, they will definitely raise the prices...
Affric | root | parent | next
Grid prices are going to start coming down in some of the most expensive parts of Australia due to SAPS, home generation and storage, and microgrids.

I wouldn’t rule out the grid just yet.

markdown | root | parent | next
If you find Starlink cheap they just haven't gotten around to the bait and switch in your locality. It'll come.
raw_anon_1111 | root | parent | next
Where are you? In the suburbs of Atlanta I paid $80 for AT&T Fiber 1Gbps u/d.
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UltraSane | root | parent
Man, I pay $50USD/month for 1Gbps up down in Wisconsin.
310260 | parent | next
As far as electric goes, that's a nice thought but the reality is prices will not go down in such a scenario. I'd rather my bill go to subsidizing rural areas than to pure profit. Nevermind there are benefits helpful to rural areas that grid service can provide versus solar+battery.
sandworm101 | parent | next
Maybe today, but internet over radio cannot defeat physics. There is only so much bandwidth, so much space in the RF spectrum for data. But landline internet is effectively limitless. You can always lay a second, or twentieth, fiber run. A 10cm bundle of fibers can carry more bandwidth than the entire starlink network many times over, with much lower running costs.

The most effective in rural areas is generally a combination. Fiber to a central location and wifi radio out to customers. I am monitoring a property on the west coast connected via such a setup. The last relay is actually solar powered atop an island.

jojobas | parent | next
Starlink recently hit 10k satellites. I'd hazard a guess that's not anywhere near enough getting everyone in the US, let alone worldwide, online.
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sunshinekitty | parent | next
The HN groupthink is to hate on anything Elon adjacent, satellite internet included.
razingeden | root | parent | next
hopefully that include his business partners , airlines in this case.
platevoltage | root | parent
It's not groupthink to believe that the guy sucks and is a threat to humanity. He constantly fights against the type of programs that could have possibly given us satellite internet, the same way we all get to enjoy GPS.
SV_BubbleTime | root | parent
> It's not groupthink to believe that the guy sucks and is a threat to humanity.

Wow, that’s a wild misstatement; that is exactly groupthink nonsense.

You (people) loved him before he went in for Trump.

heavyset_go | root | parent | next
> You (people) loved him before he went in for Trump.

The inflection point for the public was Musk calling the cave diver, who helped orchestrate the rescue of a dozen trapped kids, a "pedo guy" and then doubling down on it, again, twice in front of his audience of millions.

The inflection point for anyone in tech with two eyes and a brain was Musk insisting his companies produce products that do more than they are, still to this day, capable of.

First was around 2018, the latter was ~2016, although anyone who was familiar with machine learning knew models were not as capable as Musk was insisting they were, and that the hyperloop was a scam.

odo1242 | root | parent | next
Before he went in for Trump he created an obviously fake, insanely expensive system that could never work in practice (Hyperloop) just to slow down California rail projects
tdeck | root | parent | next
Before he went in for Trump he was running a factory with an alarmingly high injury rate, where employees were regularly called the N-word, and union busting. People who liked him then weren't paying attention at all.
tombert | root | parent
For what it's worth, I hated him well before he had anything to do with Trump. Most concretely when he called the cave diver a pedo for not wanting to use his stupid submarine, but I remember thinking that the Hyperloop thing he was proposing was pretty stupid too.

Oh, and when he lied about taking Tesla private so he could quickly boost the price of the stock. That sucks too. He's always sucked.